The use of aircraft for crop dusting and seeding is over a century old. Flying aircraft low over farmland to distribute liquids or solids suspended in an aqueous solution, generally consisting of pesticides, is commonly used worldwide. Within the last few decades, some countries like Japan have increasingly used unmanned aerial vehicles (“UAV”), for spray and seed applications of crops such as rice (www.gizmag.com/uav-crop-dusting/27974, Apr. 15, 2015). Currently, the use of UAVs for pollination of plants or delivery of powdered substances is unknown. According to the Harvard professors involved in the “Robobee” research program, the use of robots for pollination is at least twenty years in the future (robobees.seas.harvard.edu/robobees-project-and-colony-collapse-disorder-ccd, Apr. 15, 2015). Manned, full-sized helicopters have been used in attempts to catalyze anemophily, otherwise known as wind-pollination (U.S. Pat. No. 4,644,683, Jones et al). For example, Jones et. al discloses pollination using a helicopter piloted by a pilot flying over fields and the wind generated by the helicopter propeller causes the pollen to become airborne and reach the desired target, thereby hopefully pollinating wind-pollinated crops, such as corn. However, manned helicopters are very expensive to operate, making helicopter catalyzed anemophily very expensive without a guarantee of successful pollination rate for the high cost. Further, these manned helicopters do not drop pollen but rather they only disperse pollen by hovering over the plants and dispersing the pollen that is already available from the plants it is hovering over. In addition, flying close to the ground is dangerous for not only helicopters but aircraft as well. Full-sized helicopters and aircraft are well suited to large, flat fields free of obstacles; helicopters and aircraft are not well suited for flying close to the ground in areas that contain obstacles or are within close proximity to urban, populated or otherwise sensitive areas. Finally, both helicopters and airplanes are not well suited for distribution of small particulates, such as pollen and powders.
Therefore, current mechanical pollinators are controlled by human operators and are generally hand-held (for example, U.S. Pat. No. 3,962,821, Sharp et al.) or ground-based systems (for example, Copes, D. L., O'Rourke, D., and Randall, W. K., 1995. Field Testing a Modified Duster for Supplemental Mass Pollination in Douglas-fir Seed Orchards. Tree Planters' Notes. 46(4):118-125). However, hand-held pollinators of a billow type can be labor intensive. Further, if pollination is required at significant heights, using a hand-held pollinator can be risky due to the potential for sustaining injuries from falling.
Conversely, ground-based pollination systems, such as mechanical blowers and air compressors, are sometimes employed for pollinating crops, and are generally either pulled by a motor vehicle, such as a tractor (Copes, et al., 1995), or by hand-pulled cart (Ibrahim, A. A., AI-Shaikhly, K. J., and Yousif, Y. G., Development of a New Ground Level Pollinator for Date Palm, Publication of the Dept. Palms and Dates, Agric. Water Reso. Res. Center, Sci. Res. Council, P.O. Box 2416. Baghdad, Iraq, (date of publication unknown)). Limitations of pollination height of such ground-based systems are inherent, as a height limitation of the pollen dispersion is limited and therefore this method may not be an option. Lifting the machinery up, suspending it and then moving it for pollination purposes is a possibility, but a new set of challenges arise with this method. Specifically, heavy machinery that is suspended in the air to pollinate trees would likely require moving the machinery over uneven or unstable field and orchard ground, thereby risking an unintended and sudden release of the machinery, thereby damaging the machinery and possibly even causing injury to the operator. Further, and similar to the methods involving manned aircraft, these land-based methods may be limited in accessibility to target areas and crops due to rough terrain or terrain with many obstacles making ground based navigation difficult if not impossible.
What is needed is an effective and safe method and apparatus to deliver pollen or other dry powdered materials remotely from an unmanned airborne vehicle, this would save labor costs and could increase usable farm and crop yield.